1492 Part 23

The sunset hung over this roadstead and the sh.o.r.e. The mountains glowed in it, the nearer wood fell dark, the beach showed milky white, a knot of palms upon a horn of land caught full gold and shone as though they were in heaven. Over upon the _Cordera_ they were singing. The long cacique-canoe shot out from the shadow of the _Marigalante_.

Sun dipped, night cupped hands over the world. The long day of excitement was over. Mariners slept, adventurers gentle and simple, the twelve friars and Father Buil. Seventeen ships, nigh fifteen hundred men of Europe, swinging with the tide before the land we were to make Spanish.

The watch raised a cry. Springing from his bed Juan Lepe came on deck to find there confusion, and under the moon in the clear water, swimming forms, swimming from us in a kind of desperate haste and strength. There was shouting to man the boat. One jostling against me cried that they were the captive Indians. They had broken bonds, lifted hatch, knocked down the watch, leaped over side. Another shouted. No, the Caribs were safe. These were the women--

The women--seven forms might be made out--were not far from land. I felt tingling across to me their hope and fear. Out of ship shadow shot after them our boat. Strongly rowed, it seemed to gain, but they made speed strongly, strongly. The boat got into trouble with the shallows. The swimmers now stood and ran, now were racers; in a moment they would touch the dry, the shining beach. Out of boat sprang men running after them, running across low white lines of foam. The women, that strong woman cacique ahead, left water, raced across sand toward forest. Two men were gaining, they caught at the least swift woman. The dark, naked form broke from them, leaped like a hurt deer and running at speed pa.s.sed with all into the ebony band that was forest.

Alonso de Ojeda burst into a great laugh. "Well done, Catalina!"

The Admiral's place could ever be told by his head over all. Moreover his warm, lifted, powerfully pulsing nature was capable of making around him a sphere that tingled and drew. One not so much saw him as felt him, here, there. Now I stood beside him where he leaned over rail. "Gone,"

he said. "They are gone!" He drew a deep breath. I can swear that he, too, felt an inner joy that they had escaped clutching.

But in the morning he sent ash.o.r.e a large party under his brother, Don Diego. We received another surprise. No Indians on the beach, none in the forest, and when they came to the village, only houses, a few parrots and the gardens, dewy fresh under the sun's first streaming. No Indians there, nor man nor woman nor child, not Guacanagari, not Guarin, not Catalina and her crew--none! They were gone, and we knew not where, Quisquaya being a huge country, and the paths yet hidden from us or of doubtful treading. But the heaped mountains rose before us, and Juan Lepe at least could feel a.s.sured that they were gone there. They vanished and for long we heard nothing of them, not of Guacanagari, nor of Guarin who had saved Juan Lepe, not of Catalina, nor any.

This neighborhood, La Navidad and the shipwreck of the _Santa Maria_, burned Guarico and now this empty village, perpetual reminder that in some part our Indian subjects liked us not so well as formerly and could not be made Christian with a breath, grew no longer to our choice. Something of melancholy overhung for the Admiral this part of Hispaniola. He was seeking a site for a city, but now he liked it not here. The seventeen ships put on sail and, a stately flight of birds greater than herons, pursued their way, easterly now, along the coast of Hispaniola.

Between thirty and forty leagues from the ruin of La Navidad opened to us a fair, large harbor where two rivers entered the sea. There was a great forest and bright protruding rock, and across the south the mountains. When we landed and explored we found a small Indian village that had only vaguely heard that G.o.ds had descended. Forty leagues across these forests is a long way. They had heard a rumor that the cacique of Guarico liked the mighty strangers and Caonabo liked them not, but as yet knew little more. The harbor, the land, the two rivers pleased us. "Here we will build," quoth the Viceroy, "a city named Isabella."

CHAPTER XXIX

CHRISTMASTIDE, a year from the sinking of the _Santa Maria_, came to nigh two thousand Christian men dwelling in some manner of houses by a river in a land that, so short time before, had never heard the word "Christmas." Now, in Spain and elsewhere, men and women, hearing Christmas bells, might wonder, "What are they doing--are they also going to ma.s.s--those adventurers across the Sea of Darkness? Have they converted the Indies? Are they moving happily in the golden, spicy lands? Great marvel! Christ now is born there as here!"

Juan Lepe chanced to be walking in the cool of the evening with Don Francisco de Las Casas, a sensible, strong man, not unread in the philosophers. He spoke to me of his son, a young man whom he loved, who would sooner or later come out to him to Hispaniola, if he, the elder, stayed here. So soon as this we had begun to speak thus, "Come out to Hispaniola." "Come out to Isabella in Hispaniola." What a strong wind is life, leaping from continent to continent and crying, "Home wherever I can breathe and move!" This young man was Bartolome, then at Salamanca, at the University. Bartolome de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should live to know and work with. But this evening I heard the father talk, as any father of any promising son.

With us, too, was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had a story out of Mandeville of a well by the city of Polombe in Prester John's country.

If you drank of the well, though you were dying you would never more have sickness, and though you were white-bearded you would come young again!

The palms waved above Isabella that was building behind the camp by the river. It was beginning, it was planned out; the stone church, the stone house of the Viceroy were already breast-high. A Spanish city building, and the bells of Europe ringing.

Out sprang the noise of a brawl.--There was that in the Admiral that would have when it could outward no less than inward magnificence.

He could go like a Spartan or Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came--magnificence! With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household.

He had no less than thirty personal servants and retainers. Hidalgos here at Isabella had also servants, but no one more than two or three.

It was among these folk that first arose our amazing jealousies and envies. Now and again the masters must take part. Not the Viceroy who in such matters went very stately, but certain of our gentlemen. Loud and angry voices rose under the palms, under a sky of pale gold.

Sent for, I found the Admiral lying on his bed, not yet in his stone house but in a rich and large pavilion brought out especially for the Viceroy and now pitched upon the river bank, under palms. I came to him past numbers out of that thirty. Idle here; they certainly were idle here! With him I found a secretary, but when he could he preferred always to write his own letters, in his small, clear, strong hand, and now he was doing this, propped in bed, in his brow a knot of pain. He wrote many letters. Long afterwards I heard that it had become a saying in Spain, "Write of your matters as often as Christopherus Columbus!"

I sat waiting for him to finish and he saw my eyes upon yet unfolded pages strewing the table taken from the _Marigalante_ and set here beside him. "Read if you like," he said. "The ships set sail day after to-morrow."

I took and read in part his letter to a learned man with whom, once or twice, Jayme de Marchena had talked. It was a long letter in which the Admiral, thinker to thinker, set forth his second voyage and now his city building, and at last certain things for the mind not only of Spain but of France and Italy and England and Germany. "All lands and all men whom so far we have come to," wrote the Admiral, "are heathen and idolaters. In the providence of G.o.d all such are given unto Christendom.

Christendom must take possession through the acts of Christian princes, under the sanction of Holy Church, allowed by the Pope who is Christ our King's Viceroy. Seeming hardship bringeth great gain! Millions of souls converted, are baptized. Every infant feeleth the saving water. Souls that were lost now are found. Christ beameth on them! To that, what is it that the earthly King of a country be changed?"

His quill traveled on over paper. Another sheet came into my hand. I read it, then sat pondering. He sighed with pain, pushed all aside and presently bade the secretary forth. When the man was gone he told me of an agony behind his eyes that now stabbed and now laid him in a drowsiness. I did what I could for him then waited until the access was over. It pa.s.sed, and he took again his pen.

I said, "You advise that there be made a market for Carib slaves, balancing thus the negroes the Portuguese are bringing in, and providing a fund for our needs--"

He said, "They are eaters of men's flesh, intractable and abominable, not like the gentler people we find hereabouts! It is certain that before long, fleet after fleet coming, our two thousand here growing into many thousands, more cities than Isabella arising, commerce and life as in Europe beginning--Well, these fiercer, Caribal islands will be overrun, taken for Spain! What better to do with their people? I do not wish to slay them and eat them!"

"Slaves--"

"How many Moors in Castile and Arragon, slaves and none the worse for it, being baptized, being kindly enough entreated! And now the Portuguese bring Negroes, and are they the worse off, being taken from a deep d.a.m.nation? Long ago, I have read, the English were taken to Rome and sold in the market place, and the blessed Gregory, seeing them, cried, 'Christ shall be preached in their nation!' Whereupon he sent Augustine and all England was saved.--Look you, this world is rude and worketh rudely! But it climbs in the teeth of its imperfections!"

"I do not doubt that," I said. "When it wills to climb."

"I do but lay it before the Sovereigns," he answered. "I do not know what they will think of it there. But truly I know not what else to do with these Asiatics when they withstand us! And even in slavery they must gain from Christians! What matters masters when they find the True Master?"

Juan Lepe brooded still while the pen scratched and scratched across the page. The noise ceased. I looked up to see if he were in pain again, and met gray-blue eyes as longing as a child's. "What I would," he said, "is that the Lord would give to me forever to sail a great ship, and to find, forever to find! The sea is wider than the land, and it sends its waves upon all lands. Not Viceroy, but the Navigator, the Finder--"

Juan Lepe also thought that there streamed his Genius. Here he was able, but there played the Fire. But he, like many another, had bound himself.

Don Cristoval Colon--Viceroy--and eighths and tenths!

CHAPTER x.x.x

TWELVE of our ships went home to Spain.

February wheeled by. March was here, and every day the sun sent us more heat.

The Indians around us still were friendly--women and all. From the first there was straying in the woods with Indian women. Doubtless now, in the San Salvador islands, in Cuba and in Hispaniola, among those Guaricos fled from us to the mountains, would be infants born of Spanish fathers.

Juan Lepe contemplated that filling in the sea between Asia and Europe with the very blood.

Sickness broke out. It was not such as that first sickness at La Navidad, but here were many more to lie ill. Besides Juan Lepe, we now possessed three physicians. They were skillful, they labored hard, we all labored. Men died of the malady, but no great number. But now among the idle of mind and soul and the factious arose the eternal murmur. Not heaven but h.e.l.l, these new lands! Not wealth and happy ease, but poverty and miserable toil! Not forever new spectacle and greedy wonder, but tiresome river, forest and sea, tiresome blue heaven, tiresome delving and building, tiresome rules, restrictions, commandments, yeas and nays!

Parties arose, two main parties, and within each lesser differings.

The Viceroy stiffly withstood the party that was not his, and upon some slur and insolence took from a man his office. Followed a week of gla.s.sy smoothness. Then suddenly, by chance, was discovered the plot of Bernal Diaz de Pisa--the first of many Spanish conspiracies. It involved several hundred men and was no less a thing than the seizure in the dark night of the ships and the setting sail for Spain, there to wreck the fame of Christopherus Columbus and if possible obtain the sending out of some prince over him, who would beam kindly on all hidalgos and never put them to vulgar work. A letter was found in Bernal Diaz's hand, and if therein any ill was left unsaid of the Admiral and Viceroy, I know not what it might be! The "Italian", the "Lowborn", the "madly arrogant and ambitious", the "cruel" and "violent", the "tyrant" acted. Bernal Diaz was made and kept prisoner on Vicente Pinzon's ship. Of his following one out of ten lay in prison for a month. Of the seamen concerned three were flogged and all had their pay estopped.

One might say that Isabella was builded. Columbus himself stood and moved in better health. Now he would go discovering on dry land, to Alonso de Ojeda's glee, glee indeed of many. The mountains of Cibao, where might be the gold,--and gold must be had!

And we might find Caonabo, and what peoples were behind our own mountains, and perhaps come upon Guacanagari. We went, four hundred men and more, an army with banners. We wished to impress, and we took any and all things that might help in that wise. Drum and trumpet beat and sang. Father Buil was not with us. But three of his missionaries accompanied us, and they carried a great crucifix. There were twenty horses, and terrible were these to this land as the elephants of the Persians to the Greeks. And much we marveled that Cuba and Hayti had no memory nor idea of elephants. A throng of Indians would go with us, and in much they carried our supplies. It was first seen clearly at this time, I think, the uses that might be drawn from our heathen subjects.

Alonso de Ojeda, Juan Ponce de Leon and Pedro Margarite rode with the Admiral. Others followed on black and bay and white horses. Juan Lepe marched with the footmen. He was glad to find Luis Torres.

Before setting out we went to ma.s.s in the new church. Candles burned, incense rose in clouds, the friars chanted, the bell rang, we took the wafer, the priest lifted the chalice.

The sun rose, the trumpets rang, we were gone. South, before us, the mountain line was broken by a deep notch. That would be our pa.s.s, afar, and set high, filled with an intense, a burning sapphire. We had Indian guides.

Day, evening, camp and night. Dawn, trumpets, breakfast and good understanding and jollity. After breakfast the march, and where was any road up the heights? And being none we would make one and did, our hidalgos toiling with the least. By eve we were in the high pa.s.s, level ground under our feet, above us magnificent trees. We called it the Pa.s.s of the Hidalgos. We threw ourselves down and slept. At sunrise we pushed on, and presently saw what Juan Lepe once before had seen, the vast southward-lying plain and the golden mountains of Cibao.

There rose a cry, it was so beautiful! The Admiral named it Vega Real, the Royal Plain.

Sweating, panting, we came at last down that most difficult descent into rolling forest and then to a small bright stream, beside it garden patches and fifty huts. The inhabitants fled madly, we heard their frightened shouts and the screaming of children. Thereafter we tried to keep in advance a small body of Indians, so that they might tell that the G.o.ds were coming, but that they would not injure.

Acclivity and declivity fell away. We were fully in an enormous, fertile and populous plain.

The horses and the hors.e.m.e.n! At first they thought that these were one.

When some cowering group was surrounded and kept from breaking away, when Alonso de Ojeda or another leaped from steed to earth, from earth again to steed, they moaned with astonishment and some relief. But the horses, the horses--never to have seen any great four-footed things, and now these that were proud and pawed the earth and neighed and--De Ojeda's black horse--reared, curvetted, bounded, appeared to threaten!

The eyes, the mane, the great teeth!--There grew a legend that they were fed upon men's flesh, red men's flesh!